


Prompt #19

by kittymills



Series: Sheith Snippets [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, and that scares the crap out of me”, canonverse, set in 2nd half of s7, slight angst, “I think I’m in love with you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 17:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15711540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymills/pseuds/kittymills
Summary: Prompt List  ♛ Imagines#19 “I think I’m in love with you, and that scares the crap out of me”





	Prompt #19

When Shiro rounds the corner of one of the garrison’s winding corridors, Keith is waiting for him.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Keith tells him, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Shiro gets the sense Keith was aiming for casual but there’s a tension in his frame that Shiro recognizes instantly. “Want to tell me why?”

That was Keith, wasn’t it. Straight to the point.

“Keith,” Shiro sighs and runs a hand over the back of his neck. He’s tired. It’s been a long day, meeting after meeting with the other leaders, trying to make sense of how they were going to fight back. He doesn’t want to get into this now. “It’s late.”

“So?” Keith unpeels himself from the wall and stalks towards him. The glint in his eye makes Shiro wary.

“So, I’m tired and I want to get some sleep.”

A flicker of concern crosses Keith’s face and Shiro feels vaguely guilty for playing on it. He knows Keith’s been watching him like a hawk since Allura had placed his essence back into this body. He’s mostly recovered now, but he’s still tired.  And Keith is right, Shiro has been avoiding him.

“You okay?” Keith finally asks him. He’s taken his hands away from his chest and shoved them in his pockets instead. His shoulders hunch a little.

“Fine,” Shiro rushes to assure him, to brush it off. “Just tired like I said. It’s been a long day.”

He starts walking again, down the quiet halls towards his quarters and Keith falls into step beside him. He slides Keith a glance. “Shouldn’t you be getting some rest too? You have that mission tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” Keith shrugs. They walk in silence for a few moments longer, until the door to Shiro’s assigned quarters looming ahead.  “Is that the only reason you’re avoiding me?”

He doesn’t quite recognize the tendril that curls around Keith’s words. It sounds faintly like hurt, or maybe a quiet resignation and it hits Shiro hard. It’s hard to reconcile, he doesn’t know what to make of it, and as much as he wants to take Keith and scrub it away… Well, what can they do anyway? There’s a war to fight and it wasn’t about them.

“I’m not avoiding you,” Shiro says mildly but even he can hear the lie in his voice. He busies himself by fishing his access card out of his uniform pocket and swiping it across the door panel.  The door swipes open with a low hiss and Keith follows him inside without breaking his stride.

“Yes. You are,” Keith says once they’re sealed inside. The barracks are underground in this portion of the base, dimly lit and stuffy but it’s painfully familiar.  Keith hovers by the doorway. “Are you… is this about Black? Are you mad at us-“

“What? No. No, of course not.”

Silence falls between them.

“Then what?” Keith demands. He doesn’t move from his position at the doorway, ready to make a hasty retreat… or maybe to block Shiro’s own exit.  Shiro feels a bit like he wants to run right now. He’s not ready for this. He’s not ready to face the way his feelings for Keith have changed. He’s not ready to admit how only sadness and regret remained when he stood at the memorial and traced his fingers over Adam’s face. He’d loved Adam, he truly did once, but the memory of that love feels pale and soft under the sheer raw emotion that he feels for Keith now.

And what could they even do about it? With Sendak lurking in orbit, fighting for their lives, for their planet’s very existence, what could confessing his feelings really achieve but serve as a distraction for Keith. Shiro wasn’t going to put that on him.

“Keith, this isn’t-“

“Then what?” The harsh way Keith spits out the words makes him look up. The glimmer in Keith’s eyes and the clenched fists at his sides make Shiro’s voice disappear in his throat. “Ever since we brought you back, you’ve been distant and I know, _I know_ you’ve been through so much, with Zarkon and the astral plane, and our fight and god, with Haggar and your arm, but-“

Keith trails off and his eyes slide shut. It takes a moment for him to bring himself under control and the next time their gazes meet, Keith’s eyes are clear and calm.

Shiro can’t help but marvel at the change in him. The years with Krolia have made Keith a force to be reckoned with, not that he ever wasn’t before.

But now. Now, he was breathtaking in his fury, and terrifying in his mastery of it.

“It’s not that,” Shiro finally says into the beat of silence that stretches between them like a physical entity.  His heart rate starts to climb under Keith’s stare. 

“Then what,” Keith says again but without any further heat. The sadness and the hurt are unmistakeable now and Shiro feels like he’s going to stagger under the weight of it. It’s not what he wanted. It’s the opposite of what he wanted.

He can’t lie to Keith. He can’t push him away and he’s too selfish to even want to. All he has left is the truth and the hope that somehow how they can work through this.

“Because I think I’m in love with you,” he says quietly, staring at the floor. He can’t bring himself to meet Keith’s eyes and he wonders when he became such a coward.

When he has so much to lose, it seems. He doesn’t want to lose Keith. Not over this. “And it scares the crap out of me.”

There’s a small sound, maybe a gasp from Keith. It’s an effort but he refuses to run from this. He drags his gaze upwards, unsure of what he’ll see there.

Keith crosses the space between them, his expression unreadable and Shiro briefly experiences a shock of panic because this is unchartered territory. This is Keith and himself as equals and as much as he knows Keith, he’s still learning his way around this more assured version of him, the leader he’s become in his own right, away from Shiro.

“I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable,” he goes to say but Keith makes the words die in his throat when he takes his hand.  Shiro can’t read his face, he’s looking down at where he smooths his thumb over the back of Shiro’s palm. Shiro likes the touch, Keith’s hands are strong and warmth seeps into Shiro’s bones. 

“It could never make me uncomfortable,” Keith tells him and for the first time in his life, Shiro can’t read the expression in Keith’s eyes. “Do... do you remember what I told you? During our fight?”

_Our fight_. Keith says it like it was a mere spat on the training mats and not a monster wearing his face trying to cut the life from him. God, how can Keith look past all that? And yet, he never let go.

“Yes,” he breathes. He remembers. He remembers in stabs and flashes and pain and anguish, of him but not him, and screaming without a voice. A shiver rolls over him unwittingly and Keith steps closer. Close enough that Shiro can feel the heat of his body radiating off him, see the dark streak against his cheek and his throat aches. “Yes, I remember.”

_I don’t want to. But I do._

“Do you remember what I said?”

“You said I was your brother,” Shiro answers and this time there’s no mistaking the flicker of what is definitely annoyance that skitters across Keith’s face.

“Not that,” Keith says with a slight shake of his head. “The rest.”

Shiro doesn’t answer. He sometimes wonders if he dreamed that memory. That it was just a fabrication of his mind, of Haggar’s manipulation in the clone’s body. He doesn’t let himself hope that it’s anything more.

Regaining Keith’s trust had been enough.

Keith lets out a small sigh and his spare hand snakes it’s way up Shiro’s chest, curling against the nape of his neck and drawing him close. Keith’s taller now, not quite Shiro’s height, but close enough he can tug Shiro down and press their foreheads together without much effort. His breath ghosts over his lips.

“I love you,” Keith says.

Shiro knows this. He knows Keith has loved him for years, for plucking him out of the group home and pushing him towards the stars. He knows Keith feels like he owes Shiro, that Shiro had been the one to lift him up. He knows Keith loves him like a friend, and yes, like a brother too. They’d found family in each other.

“I know,” Shiro says with it with a smile, promising himself it’s enough. “You don’t have to worry, I’ll keep-“

There’s a small, annoyed huff that comes from Keith that cuts him off. Keith’s hand against his neck curls a little tighter. “No, Takashi,” Keith says and the sound of his name on Keith’s tongue sounds like a homecoming. “I’m _in_ love with you, too.”


End file.
